


See No Evil

by karrenia_rune



Category: Andromeda
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, community: 100situations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-24 01:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A couple of semi inter-connected  ficlets featuring Beka Valentine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Crash and Burn

Disclaimer: Andromeda belongs to Fireworks Productions and Tribune Entertainment. It is not mine.

She knew that Trance had meant well, but wen she considered her options Beka realized with a start: "I am so damn tired of people meaning well."

If Dylan Hunt had been around right now Beka probably would have slugged him just for being his smug, insufferable self, always filled with so much understanding and paitence for whatever it was that she was going through, Certainly,he may not have completely understood it, but he knew that she needed to go through it alone.

Sometimes she wondered if fighting the good fight was worthwhile anymore. Somewhere along the line she had come to the realization that it was a lot harder to be right, and have to fight for it. Giving in right at this instant in time would be far easier. 

She was a fighter, in fact she had always prided hersefl on her resilence, of always knowing what to do, but as she suddenly recalled Tyr Anazasi once said: Good and evil are abstracts, and an unnecessary distraction when it cones to one's own ability to survive.'

"That's easy for you say, big fella," Beka said as she turned around and within a few strides managed to make it to her bed and flung herself down on the mattress. "You didn't stick it out on this one man's crusade to restore the Commonwealth like I did, and where did it get me?"

Lying on her back, the cut on her hand clotting nicely, she was able to ignore it and focused her gaze on the ceiling. She wasn't really seeing any of the objects or features of her quarters, instead she closed her eyes and memories came surging back, of Tyr, in the caves of the Magog World Ship, of being held prisoner at knife point; of Dylan and er friends coming to her rescue, of fighting their way out up against impossible odds.

Happier memories winked into view, of herself as a child, of her freinds and family; these images she wanted to hold onto as a drowning swimmer clings to a piece of driftwood; yet it seemed that was not meant to be. 

It was an oddly disjointed and rather fragmentary series of memories, more like the landscape of a dream sequence. She saw herself going throgh the motions, there was no sound track in these series of memories/visions. And in the back of her mind, Beka wondered if her own subconcious was responsible for dredging these up, or something else was at work here.

Beka was a a realist, and for most of her adult life she had had to be, in order to survive. 

Even while in the midst of these fragmentary dream sequence, she looked for the rational explanation.  
'Maybe this is what happens when one quits 'Flash' the way I did. Now I'm having hallucinations. Maybe I will have to go see Trance for some kind of treatment,' she thought and the thought was pushed out of her mind by the roaring torrent of memories and images.

Beka decided, after a while, that if there was any way of bringing an end to the torrent it would be the better part of valor to allow it to wash over her. 

She let her concsious mind to take a back seat to her subconcisous, and like a drowning swimmer she went under for the last time. It was quiet in there, and the voices in her head went silent at last.

A peaceful night's sleep which had been so elusive for the past few nights finally came to her.


	2. Tailspin

Disclaimer: Andromeda is the creation of Gene Roddenberry and belongs to Fireworks Entertainment and Tribune Productions; it is not mine. Set between seasons two and three and features Beka Valentine and references events from the 1st season episode "It Makes a Lovely Light."

 

"Tailspin" by Karen

The jaw-clenched, agonozingly slow spiral from the artifical high created by the drug, Flash most always left her feeling as if someone had pulled every plug on ever last remaining nerve ending.

It was probably a good thing, when put in that perspective, that she felt simply too numb and wrung out to care anymore. 

"Hurry up and wait, time is all we got. Why should I worry if they find me like this,   
all they'll do is repeat variations of anger, worry, concern, and yell at me before they go away relaizing that it's all futile, anyway." 

Even though Beka had publicly and privately assured her friends and crewmates that would quit taking the drug, quitting had been a lot tougher than Beka Valentine had blithely and fondly assumed that it would be.

In the hours betwenn night watches and long stints at the helm of the Andromeda Ascedant  
when no one was watching she would find some dark corner and the small bottle she had stashed away from any all prying eyes, or wagging tongues.

"It's getting hard and harder,' Beka muttered under her breath.

The bottle felt cool and smooth underneath her fingers, as if it were nothing more dangerous than a bottle of expensive perfume, and she was here contemplating her own relfection as she prepared to go to dinner with either Captian Hunt, or more frequently of late, with the ship's acting weapon's officer and only Nietzchean, Tyr Anazasi.

"Now there's someone who hasn't chipped in the chours of 'I told you so, and 'how could you!" Beka laughed, it was a nervous, high-pitched and short-lived one. "Probably figures it's beneath his dignity."

A part of her, the conccious, reasoning part of her mind, felt that she ought to feel guilty about abusing both her own well-being, not to mention that her amped up and heightened reflexes while giving her an emotional and physical high for a while, could and had in the past endangered the lives of her crew.

She had sworn, long before this, that she would not become addicted, that she would become like her old man, Ignatius Valentine. Up until now, she had done a bang up job of making certain that that supposedly inevitable scenario never happened. 

"Well, then, we're making progress, aren't we?"

Trance knew, more than any of them, that while Beka Valentine feared very few things that might concievably come calling and threaten everything that she held dear, from friends to her ship, and her life; not necessarily in that order; one thing Beka privately feared was that she would fall into the trap of abusing   
Flash, just like her father. 

As she stood by the floor-to ceiling mirror that hung from the wall of her quarters, starng at her own reflection Beka called to mind an old Earth story that Seamus Harper had once told her: How in a less tehcnolocially advanced era, doctors and phsyicans had once used a drug derived from plants, called an opiate and used it to incrementally medicate their paitents, and in some rare occassions, themselves. She figured that Harper, at the time, was using the story as an object lesson,  
one she hardly needed or wanted.

Dylan had even said as much to her face, he was nothing if not overly direct and somewhat overbearing, but he had meant well. "You can't help someone who does not want to be helped." They had all meant well, as far as Beka was concerned they could all take their 'meant well, and shove it out of the nearest airlock.

Really now, what she was doing was necessary, if she had wanted to get that convoy of ships safely navigatedthrough the slipstream, what harm was there in taking incermental minminal does of the stuff to stimulate and increase her own natural reaction time and reflexes? She was the best pilot they had.

The face that stared back at her was still her own, but in the foggy subliminal way that she felt after recovering from withdrawal symptoms. 

Beka relaized that the paleness of her skin and the dark circles underneath her eyes, weren't all from adrenaline and lack of sleep."Something I should remdy as soon as possible," she thought and shoved the notion into a back corner of her mind.

Beka lifted her arms until they were level with her eyes and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands. "I can quit anytime I want to." 

She took a slow step back from the mirror as she brushed a strand of blonde hair away from her eyes. "The question is, do I want to quit?

The mirror reflection was predicatablly unforthcoming with a response to that important question.

"I am the one alway in control, the one that always has all the answers," Beka muttered and allowed her arms to drop back down to her sides. "So, why the hell do I feel like it's all falling apart? It's not supposed to be like this, damn it!"

Beka whilred around, pivoting on one heel until she had her back to the mirror and more wobbled than strode toward the contoured couch before she collapsed prone upon it. "I will be the one in control of this, even if it kills me. Bold words, Valentine, let's see if you can live up them," she could have sworn she heard a mocking, chiding voice reply. The voice sounded an awful like her own, too bad she was too damn stubborn and befogged to pay attention to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also previously posted and written for the livejournal community, 100situations, table 3, prompt #35 crawl


	3. Crash and Burn

Beka would have never figured herself for the type to constantly second-guess her actions, because for one she considered it beneath her vaunted Valentine pride. No matter what happened, no matter how many times she came so close to the big score only to watch it slip through her fingers; there was always that vaunted Valentine pride to fall back on.

After a while it had even become a kind of family motto, tailored here and there by her and her brother, Rafael Valentine, to Valentine Smart, Valentine smarter. It had defined their early lives under the care of their father, Ignatius in his more sober moments. Those moments; as they got older, had become few and far between until she had been forced as a teenager to make a very difficult decision. She had sworn by everything that she held dear that she would never ever succumb to the deadly siren song of the dangerous designer drug known as “Flash.

Her father had, and as she and Rafe had watched from a distant, but with the mingled horrified and fascinated absorption that one tends to have watching a crash, their father begin to spiral farther and father downward until they could barely recognize him anymore.

She would never have gone so far as to characterize Ignatius Valentine as a monster, because he did manage to recognize his obligations as a father and sole provider for their family, even as dysfunctional as it often seemed to be; but still it was a kind of unspoken issue between the three of them.

Now, years later, if there was one lesson that had always been pounded into her skull from a very young age; it was that it was simply something that ended up hurting you in the long run. The long run was very much on her mind at the moment, cruising through the spacing lanes, alone with her thoughts.

Right at this moment, her thoughts did not make very good company.


End file.
